A Gale and Madge's tale
by Mori Belicov Hathaway
Summary: Surprise surprise, read to find out xD


**Hope you like it Nona. Hope you have a very Happy Christmas!**

**QUICK A/N: sorry for any grammar mistakes, I tried to do it right but something must have slipped anyway **

As soon as all the lights went off, I knew something had gone terribly wrong.

We were watching the 75 hunger games, this year they had them trapped in a sort of island with some sort of magnetic field.

That was, until the victors blew it.

And, as soon as they did, the power went out in the Seam.

And only one thought remained. Protect your loved ones.

I told everyone to run, to the forest, to get out because the Capitol would surely have a retaliation of what Katniss had just done.

Some part of me knew that we were going to die, but still I kept running; I needed to help people, so I left my family with Katniss's and started running around the seam, screaming for everyone to run, to save themselves. I saw the peacekeepers coming to me, but I didn't stop yelling, and as they heard me they too started to run, only to the opposite direction, to the town, convinced their precious Capitol wouldn't kill them too. How idiots were they?

Honestly, I thought that at least the major's house would be left alone. How idiot was I?

I directed the people I could through one of the holes in the fence I knew was big enough to get through. I had just reached the border of the woods when the bombs begun to fall from the sky; but worse than that, were the screams that seemed to fill the air.

After that, the most horrific image I could have thought I'd see.

The major's house was engulfed in flames. _Madge. _

That last thought came out automatically, and I wasn't conscious that I was running until I crossed the fence back to the district again, and the smell of smoke and death made me get back to my senses.

Well not entirely, you see, a sane person would have sensed all this and fled in the opposite direction; not me. I had to get to Maggs, which was a nickname I had for her. she was the love of my life; my secret love; my impossible love.

As I fled to her house, I remembered when I started to fall for her; when I realized that my heart no longer belonged to Katniss (but had it ever?) but to my strawberry girl.

When Katniss went to the games the first time, I went hunting, and didn't return for three days, I just didn't want to. I was like a soulless machine, just going from game to game.

Until she found me; I don't know how, maybe she and Katniss talked about where we went hunting, though that seemed unlikely; maybe she just knew me that well.

We sat in silence for a while; just looking at the horizon, thinking about nothing and everything at the same time. There a feeling of peace in her presence that calmed me. When it got dark, I just walked back to the seam with her. we didn't even say goodbye that first time, it didn't seem like a goodbye then.

After that day it became a sort of routine for us. I would go hunting in the morning and she would come later in the day. At first she would just watch me, and after we would sit down in silence while I cleaned my game; then we started to talk, nothing much, just minor things like the weather, and it went to major things, and we talked a lot after that, Maggs even smiled at me. I think that was the first time I started to fall for her. When I saw her smile; a bit more when I taught her how to hunt. The determination she showed to learn, the strength in her, even more than the girl on fire, she only had a different kind of strength; she could break all my barriers, and still made me feel safe.

Not long after that, we shared our first kiss, out by the lake, the place where I had only ever been with Katniss but seemed to be more mine and Maggs than hers.

But as everything else in my life after that, sooner or later I had to wake up from the dream. I knew that I couldn't be with her. She was the daughter of the mayor, and even if she wasn't, I couldn't maintain her the way she was accustomed to away from the Seam. I had an entire family to take care of, and soon I would have to work on the mines; we just would never be together.

As expected she didn't take that too well. She tried to convince me that we could work something out, that she didn't care that our life would be even harder than what it already was; but I couldn't do that to her, I wasn0t going to make her take a wrong decision by staying with me.

We didn't see her again until after I and Katniss kissed. I'm not sure why I kissed her. Maybe I felt lonely, maybe I wanted to see if maybe Katniss could somehow replace Maggs in my heart. But when I kissed her I just felt what it was, lips against lips, nothing more, and I realized that my heart had already been claimed by another girl.

That night I went to her house, to beg for forgiveness, for a chance that we could start over. But her father didn't let me in, he said that she didn't want to speak to me, defeated I just decided to head home but as I turned the corner unto the next street I turned around and looking through the window of her room was Madge, dressed in a purple dress with her hair in a braid. We said nothing for a moment, just stared at each other before she finally moved from the window and I saw her no more.

Now how I wished that I had run back to her house and demanded to see her until she forgave me. Finally I reached the house and was taken aback by the sight before me. The entire house was on fire and no person was seen anywhere.

The shock only stopped me a second though because on the next one I was kicking the front door and entering the house engulfed in flames. Everything around me blurry, there was smoke everywhere and debris was falling from the ceiling; it was a matter of time before the whole structure fell to the ground.

"Maggs!" I yelled as I went from room to room but there was no sound aside from the wood burning. Just as I was about to exit the house thinking that she was already halfway through the woods I heard a muffled sound, almost like a sob that was coming from what I assumed was the kitchen.

"Ga….Ga" it sounded. Finally reaching the doorstep I saw her; she was lying on the kitchen floor, part of the ceiling seemed to have fallen and her legs were trapped under it, luckily the part wasn't on fire, otherwise she would have been dead. She looked about to passed out, probably asphyxiated and she was barely holding on by sheer willpower.

"gale." She managed to choke out and I understood that she had been trying to call me earlier. In a second I was by her side, examining the piece of ceiling that was trapping her. it looked heavy but perhaps with the correct leverage I could make it move.

"don't worry Maggs, I'll take you out of here in no time." I tried to sooth her as I looked for something to use as a lever.

"Gale, don't you have to get out of…." Her voice trailed off, as her head slumped to the floor. I was losing her.

"Madge!" I needed to move fast, so I finally found a table; one of those old ones with the wooden legs all decorated. I broke a leg of it and quickly returned to her. It was getting quite hard to breath and my vision was becoming blurry. I came next to her and used the leg as plank, it barely moved a few inches but they were enough; without letting go of the plank I used my left arm to pull Madge out, I wasn't gentle, I couldn't take her out slowly, the leg could broke at any minute, however she didn't make any sound while I did it.

I quickly picked her up and ran with her in my arms, dodging the collapsing houses and the bodies that lay around. I saw the major's wife laying around about three houses away; a log had fallen on top of her, but I could see the jewelry that she was wearing, that woman had preferred to safe her things than her own daughter.

I didn't know how much I went on running; I was lucky, the Capitol had centered its attacks on the Seam and so I had enough time to make it out (barely) and into the woods.

It passed a few more hours until I found the others, in total, there were about 800 hundred people from the former District 12; not more than 15 were from the town. We all slept in the woods, in the morning, I led them to the lake, where everyone drank water and Prim and her mother set up a medical area and tended the ones injured. The able ones I taught how to hunt, we went on like this for a few days until a hovercraft arrived, a little time later however we realized that they were from district 13 and they came to help us. Or so we thought.

"You have to leave her." they told me before I went up into the hovercraft. I looked at Maggs, still asleep in my arms, she didn't wake up since the night of the flames.

"Son, she is too injured, I don't know how she isn't dead yet but she will be soon."

"I'm not leaving her." I growled. No freaking way would I have done that; she hadn't given up on live and I wasn't going to either. Finally, the soldier accepted her onboard and she was taken to the medical ward, I don't think he was a mean man, but he honestly didn't see any use in her if she was as good as dead already.

And so, the days progressed, after a while in 13, they brought Katniss and two other victors from the arena, and I was surprised that even though she was back it was as if she wasn't, or perhaps, it was me who was not there. That is possible too, I spent all the time that I wasn't at training or in any crazy mission that 13 sent me next to Maggs, she still wouldn't wake up, but the doctors said that she was stable for now. I never told Katniss any of it, the pain of not having Maggs with me was just too much to voice it, even to her; then they brought along Peeta, who I might add, was a total nutcase, in his first night, he tried to kill Katniss, apparently they had been torturing him in the capitol and made him believe it was all Katniss's fault.

Then, one day shortly after that they tell us that we are going off to the Capitol the final battle, the last crusade.

Needless to say I didn't intend ongoing. I hated the Capitol but I wasn't stupid, I knew when a fight was worth fighting for and when they were just using us as pieces of chess, ones that wouldn't be missed if destroyed for the greater good. Of course, I should have known that Coin wouldn't take no for an answer, and so she visited me the afternoon after the one that I had declied the offer to go.

I had been in Maggs room, and had just pulled a chair to sit next to her bed when I realized that president Coin was in the doorway.

"It's really sad isn't it? When hope in something seems pointless." She strode casually to stand in front of me, with Madge in the middle of us. I stood up and bowed slightly; after all she was my superior.

"Does not means that nothing is going to happen as long as there is some hope." I answered back, giving a fleeting glance to Maggs in her bed; she looked very peaceful in her sleep.

"Well I don't believe that things magically happen, I believe in facts and the fact is that she- Coin said motioning to Madge. – "won't survive longer, her condition is getting worse, unless something is done about it of course."

I was shocked at first, but then it clicked on me. she wanted to make a deal of some sort, and she was offering me some sort of cure.

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean that there may be a way to save her, perhaps…"

"Just cut off the bantering, what do you want?"I said already annoyed at her beating around the bush.

"We have a medicine, obviously not too much, so we have to use them in cases of real need- meaning that her or any other powerful person would need it. – fresh from the capitol and I am willing to trade enough for your precious Madge in exchange of you going to the capitol for the final quarrel."

"Why me? Why do you want me there so bad?"

"You are a fine soldier Gale, and besides, I do have other motives, but of those you don't need to know about, now, do we have a deal?" she said looking at me like someone that knew she had won.

"Fine, but I want to see Maggs awake by the time I leave, and after the war I want out of here, I want to live in the district I choose."

"Deal. Well, you better go pack soldier."

In no time I was shipped to the Capitol, Maggs hadn't woken up when I left, but I couldn't really prove that I had made a deal with Coin so I had no choice but leave and trust that when I came back she would be fine and safe.

But after the war, when I finally came back, she was gone, Coin was dead and I had no clue as to where she had gone.

I didn't want to talk or see anyone, my family was safe and back in district 12, and Katniss was there as well, with Peeta, and I believed that even if Katniss had lost it she would find a way to get herself back on her feet with Peeta by her side; honestly, I just couldn't help her anymore so I went to District 2 to fight the peacekeepers that were still alive. I fought so I wouldn't have to feel.

That was, until two weeks ago, I had received a letter and now I was o my way to district 7, once there I went to a small cottage in the outsides of the district, knocked on the door and waited.

I waited for a little while, the flowers in my hands were being crushed but I couldn't care less. And then, finally, the door opened, and the most beautiful girl opened the door, her blond curls had grown and she was wearing a simple blue dress. I took her immediately in my arms and buried my head in her neck, breathing in the scent I never thought I would smell again.

"Maggs." I breathed after a moment but didn't let go.

"I'm so sorry Gale. I thought you didn't love me anymore, I had to leave."

I don't care about that Madge, I love you, and I'm the one who's sorry, would you take me back?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

With that we entered her house, we had a lot of things to tell to each other, we had both lost so much in this war, but I knew that as long as we had each other, there was hope.

** Have a merry Christmas and a very happy new year! 3**


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